Kevin Brockmeier, "A Fable Ending in The Sound of a Thousand Parakeets"

This is about as honest as titles get. The story is a fable, in the yarny ridiculous sense, with the neat ending and the simplified version of a something you could otherwise picture as real. (As in: The man’s loneliness is truthful, but where’s all the bird poop?) And certainly the sound at the end is the one we’re promised, although the parakeets are mimicking non-bird sounds. So maybe the title’s honest, but the birds are not.